


But sometimes, I still need you

by lichtuitmixa



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:32:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lichtuitmixa/pseuds/lichtuitmixa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does Xabi see in the rear view mirror?</p>
            </blockquote>





	But sometimes, I still need you

He has a lot of time to think.

When Xabi truly considers it, he actually can’t believe the amount of time he’s spent not thinking about the past. It’s not like the chance rises in every opportune occasion.

The memories, they don’t come at him like a plague or hold him in a phantom grip of constant guilt and nostalgia. Even the most obvious cases don’t trigger anything.

The ones that do, they creep up on him in the barest of times.

 

Bare, as if to say, a void for things to rise out of the dust of what used to be there.

Xabi is hesitant to think of any part of his life that way.

He isn’t a meaningless man. He keeps the few good friends he makes well enough that he doesn’t file them into chronographs. He keeps in touch. He makes it a point to write and call when he can.

It’s not a hard thing to do these days. Though, in his line of work – in their line of work, it oftentimes comes down to actually getting through.

 

Bare, the memories themselves are not. 

They are hidden in the afterthought of moments, in the fleeting urge to look over his shoulder to find a hand that might have reached out for him once, or the follow sensation of rainfall against his back.

These memories – the feelings they rouse, they whittle no gap to ache or seek to be fulfilled. When they come they don’t bring Xabi to his knees in regret, or pilfer the light from his days. They don’t have the power to drive time to a standstill.

No.

They do, however, if for the briefest moment, make Xabi’s heart stop.

When he’s sitting in a living room with his teammates, watching English games, sharing stories about England and the northern ‘swamp’; when Nagore talks about Liverpool during dinner parties; or when Steven or Carra or Pepe call him, when he calls them – no, the thoughts don’t come then. There are no memories mooring when Jon playfully chooses to wear the Liverpool kit instead of the Real one, or when the press likes to layer more dirt on the grave and prods Xabi about his life choices, about leaving Liverpool and joining Real. They probe until they are satisfied to hear the words coming from Xabi's own mouth saying, yes, he's happy. 

Yes, yes, I'm home. 

 

Xabi doesn’t have to dig deep. He doesn’t have to lie. He has nothing to hide any more (nothing important anyway). No more great choices to make that aren’t day to day, that aren’t game to game.

He is well beyond trying to prove himself to anyone.

When he goes to bed, there’s no one else he’d rather be. It’s a dovetail of contentment split between the covers he throws on himself and the arms that follow.

So, why does he stare off in the study? When he runs out of English and the computer screen is goading him, and Nagore is downstairs hosting friends with Jon at her tail, when Xabi’s alone but not just quite, the memories come first in the form of an urge.

Like a suggestion, fingers ghosting across Xabi’s nape and trailing his arm, the combined smell of locker soap and aftershave and the vivid memory of that face.

The office chair dips and Xabi raises his head to the ceiling, eyes warm and wet and barely breathing.

 

It’s always the small things. Like Nagore’s old concierge pin in the key table. Or his unpacked cleats in the bodega. Or the clear Spanish blue skyline. 

“Who goes looking for rainfall?” asked Alvaro one time.

Xabi was leaning on the jam, watching Jon pull his plastic bicycle out of the bushes. He wiped the summer heat from his brow and grinned at his teammate.

“Not the smartest men, I’m guessing,”

 

It's when the days go smoothly and Xabi finds himself standing in the foyer sifting mail while Jon dots around the hall laughing that the loops and 8’s jump at him.

Somewhere around him, Nagore is calling from the kitchen and Jon is jumping at his leg. But in his head, he’s looking at Steven. White tunic and sandals deep in the sand, grey sweats and bed hair and English modesty, sandy hair matted by the rain and pasty skin shriveling inside drenched kits.

For a split second, his heart skips a beat.

 

Nothing compels him. In the end, that’s what Xabi wants the truth of his life to be.

When he’s on that pitch, he doesn’t want to be looking for teammates that aren’t going to be there. When he wakes up in the morning, he doesn’t want to feel like he’s there out of debt, not love. When he looks back in the future, he wants to know he has gone far enough, that the seams of lies and truth have wrought a life without regrets.

No one forced him to be here. No one forced him to leave. No one is forcing him to look back.

But he still does.

When the games are over and the day is done, the memories don’t come for him. No, never. He goes looking for them. It’s pure desperation that he kindles every flicker, takes every memory and relives it, wrong and right and different every time.

What if, what if he stayed? What if he came out? What if, what if in some other life, Steven came to him and he never turned him away? What if, in some other life, Xabi actually had the courage to stay?

What if, in some other story line, Xabi was the one who got left behind?

 

He has a lot of time to think.

His heart clenches when he realizes, well.

That’s really all he has now.

 

End

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I originally wrote and posted on LiveJournal during the peak of my Football Slash RPF days. The story is set a year in after Xabi left Liverpool FC. It's mildly compliant with events in 2009-2011. This was how I worked through the disappointments of those seasons following his departure.


End file.
